I move:—
Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £300,000 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh Márta, 1935, chun Roimh-íoc do dhéanamh leis an gCiste Urraíochta.
That a sum not exceeding £300,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1935, for an Advance to the Guarantee Fund.
The purpose of this Vote is, as stated on the face of the Estimate, to enable a further payment to be made to local authorities on foot of the local taxation grants absorbed in the Guarantee Fund in meeting arrears of land purchase annuities which were funded under the provisions of the Land Act of 1933. There has already been paid out of the Exchequer in respect of these funded arrears a sum of £1,616,000 which, with the sum of £300,000 that the Dáil is now being asked to vote, makes a total of £1,916,000. It will be remembered that the Land Act of 1933 provided for the funding of arrears of annuities in respect of the period of three years ending with the May and June gales 1933. Prior to the funding operations, these arrears had been made good at the expense of the local authorities by means of draws on the Guarantee Fund. During the progress through the Oireachtas of the Land Bill of last year—the present Land Act of 1933— the Minister then in charge indicated that recoupments would be made to the local authorities from time to time. No specific provision for such recoupment was made in the Act, but it has been our intention that payment would be made as and when the arrears were collected or, as in this case, when the finances of the local authorities appeared to require it and the Exchequer position permitted it.
I should like to emphasise at this stage that the local authorities have no right to receive payment in advance or in anticipation of these annuities. In the normal course they would only be credited with them when the people who were in default to the Land Commission, and in respect of whom the grants had been withheld, paid their debt to the Land Commission and so put the machinery of the Guarantee Fund in operation to release to the local authorities the amount which the defaulters had been responsible for withholding from the local authorities. It is common knowledge, however, that at the moment the finances of some of the county councils, the county councils in those counties in which a vigorous "no-rate" and "no-annuity" campaign has been proceeding for some time, are in an unhealthy condition, so that the local services are in jeopardy, due mainly, as I have already said, to the large volume of uncollected rates for 1933-34, or to the non-payment of annuities in those counties, which, of course, has involved the withholding of the local taxation grants from the Guarantee Fund in respect of the November-December gales of 1931. In fact, the position has been so grave that some councils have only been able to maintain the local services by means of large scale overdrafts from their treasurers. In these circumstances we have thought it advisable to come to the assistance of the local authorities and to make a payment to them on foot of the funded annuities, and it is with this in view that the Estimate for £300,000 is now being brought before the House. That amount will be distributed by the Department of Local Government and Public Health to the local authorities, proportionate to the amount to the credit of each county in the total funded arrears, subject to any minor adjustment which may be found to be necessary.
The position in 1933-34 in relation to the local taxation grants which passed through the Guarantee Fund has been worked out as follows: the unpaid annuities for the November-December, 1933, gales amounted to £470,749 against which fell to be credited payments amounting to £71,753 on foot of the arrears from the previous gales and certain miscellaneous items amounting to £25,405 odd. The difference of £373,591 fell to be met from the Guarantee Fund, and as a result the loss to the counties was £295,000 from the Agricultural Grant, plus £78,189 from the Estate Duty Grant.